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This custom illustrated graphic installation at the National Restaurant Association Show 2022 enabled attendees and influencers to create one-of-a-kind on-site photos.
Christine Johnson
Event marketers looking to grow their databases, build awareness, keep audiences engaged, and ultimately increase attendance should consider the following top-of-funnel ideas for creating and optimizing content.
Repurpose Event Content
1. Invite speakers to be guest bloggers. Ask educational presenters to contribute an article about their session topic to an event blog or website. Many will enthusiastically take advantage of this additional opportunity to share their wisdom with a new audience.
For instance, California human resources association PIHRA invited speakers and sponsors of its 2022 California HR Conference, held in May in Anaheim, to write guest articles for PIHRA News, which resulted in several pieces that resonated with the audience, such as “Return to Work and COVID-19.”
2. Record event sessions, including keynotes or other event sessions (with permission) and then share short clips or select full sessions on YouTube. Be sure to include targeted keywords within YouTube posts, so they can be more easily discovered. If your organization hosts a podcast, the audio from recorded event sessions could also be used as podcast content.
3. Share memorable quotes or statistics from keynote presentations or educational sessions. These tidbits can be turned into quote graphics or infographics for social media.
Leverage On-site Trends
4. Choose content topics based on popular sessions. To understand which topics are resonating with a target audience, pay attention to the topics most frequently submitted by event speakers and the sessions most popular among attendees. Those sessions could be converted directly into articles or used as inspiration for other original content.
5. Feature new or innovative products. Events are launching grounds for new trends — they’re found on the exhibit floor, in education sessions, and in dedicated new product showcase areas. Feature innovative products, novel ideas, and trending topics in articles, videos, and social content. (See On the Web for an example.)
6. Interview attendees and speakers on a topic. Conduct person-on-the-street interviews with speakers, attendees, and exhibitors about the hottest industry topics. Ask interviewees for their names and contact information to give them proper credit and tag them in posts.
2 More: Turn Your Attendees Into Marketers
You can turn your attendees into evangelists by creating Instagrammable moments with a photobooth or selfie station. Attendees will be eager to capture their own content and share it among their networks of friends and colleagues.
And by promoting a unique hashtag for an event, the content that attendees create becomes more discoverable. Hashtags can be used to curate content on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, and there are companies such as Walls.io that can create virtual or in-person content walls to showcase the digital content from an event.
Christine Johnson is director of content at mdg, a marketing and public relations agency specializing in audience acquisition for B2B events.
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For an example of how to create content from the show floor, read “8 New Pet Products to Stock for Summer,” a post mdg created for World Pet Association featuring a selection of products from the SuperZoo show floor.